


another life to lose

by humvee



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humvee/pseuds/humvee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate’s always been the one with other plans, the one who could afford to choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	another life to lose

**Author's Note:**

> title from Greg Laswell's song

Brad gets it. It’s over—it never started—and truth be told he feels a little better knowing for sure. No more limbo. The certainty helps at first—he’s a realist, it’s easier when you have some reality to work with. Brad doesn’t think he’ll ever live without Nate. He’s not being dramatic. They still talk sometimes, they still have mutual friends, they’ll still catch up with each other and see each other at paddle parties, but gradually, slowly, he realizes he still loves Nate. It’s there in his chest, late at night, a residual ache that won’t go away, no matter how many good-looking and perfectly nice people he meets, how many whores he fucks, how many times he replays the scenes in his head, especially the last one, and tells himself it couldn’t happen anyway. This is real life—it’s not something out of a Lifetime movie, and they’re not in a combat zone anymore—and this is the way things happen. It hurts, and it never goes away.

Nate’s always been the one with other plans, the one who could afford to choose. Brad rarely made sweeping decisions, and those he did he made with certainty, with deliberation, with finality—in his eyes, he only chose once, and that was choosing the Corps. The Corps is Brad’s life. It’s been his course from the very beginning, and as easily as Nate stepped into it he should been able to step out. Brad wants to be able to love the Corps again, as much as he did before—and he’s sure he does, but this—whatever it is, whatever it was—was smothering it, seeping into everything, poisoning things, and the worst part is that it wasn’t just affecting his love for the Corps.

: : :

They’re not actors. Nothing is glamorous or polished. Sex is fast and rough and ugly, grunts and ugly sounds. They don’t talk about how much they love each other. They barely touch each other in the mornings, just a hand swiped across a stomach or a slow slide up from the back of the knee to the small of the back. Sometimes Brad pushes Nate onto his stomach, his face into the bed; if he looks at Nate he probably won’t last long. And when he can’t see Nate’s face he can still hate him, he can pretend that he wants to hurt him, he can slam into him as hard as he wants and stave off pity and love. Nate wants it as bad as Brad does sometimes. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, he pushes Brad and makes him fuck him. Brad always wants it, wants Nate, wants Nate’s hands on him and his mouth on his. He doesn’t tell Nate this, but he’s pretty sure Nate knows. It’s what keeps him away.

He knows Nate probably fucks other people and does other things that definitely don’t involve Brad when they’re apart. He doesn’t know why he thinks that Nate is so innocent. But he’s always been good at isolating situations, and he just doesn’t think about it.

: : :

Nate doesn’t know what he wants. Brad realizes he didn’t either.

They’re in bed, spent and tired and unhappy, and it’s cold even though Nate said the heater was on. Nate tugs the covers up around them. Brad is staring at the ceiling. Nate watches him for a while, and then starts pulling on his boxers, moving to sit on the side of the bed. He’s going to get up, get dressed, make coffee, go into the bathroom and lean his head against the mirror, be okay—but Brad’s hand on his shoulder stops him. He doesn’t turn around, just closes his eyes.

Brad’s mouth is soft against his shoulder. Nate can just barely feel his lips moving, but he knows there are words. Nate doesn’t move, eyes still closed, and feels the weight on the bed shift, Brad crawling over and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed next to him.

There are no tears. “Did you really think it was going to work?” Nate whispers, almost inaudibly, against Brad’s cold, sweaty neck.

Brad is silent. What is he supposed to say? It’s a question Nate doesn’t want his real answer to.

“Everything ends at some point,” says Nate.

Brad wants to ask why, wants to ask why now, why here, why after two years, why—

He doesn’t know if it’s self-restraint or denial, but he doesn’t ask.

Nate doesn’t get out of bed. They fuck again that night. Nate is limp and quiet, and Brad is rough, angry that he can’t seem to get enough, that he can’t hold on to Nate, that Nate doesn’t hold on, that Nate’s hands slide off of Brad’s arms. They don’t look at each other. It’s the last time. They don’t acknowledge it, but Brad suspects. He didn’t want it to be that way, he swears he didn’t want it, but he knew it would be like this. He never knew how to let go at the right moment. He never learns.

: : :

He’s wandering around JFK, slowly walking to his terminal from the Starbucks when his phone rings. He’s early enough that most of the seats are free, and he dumps his pack beside him as he answers before the call goes to voicemail. He doesn’t bother checking the caller ID.

“Brad?” comes the voice, and Brad grips the shitty piece of plastic tighter.

“Yeah,” he says, and Nate says, “I got your message earlier.”

“I’m here,” says Brad quietly, and he knows there’s no way he can miss this flight, no way Nate would leave and drive up here, and he doesn’t even know what he means. It just sounds like something he wants to say. He’s in an airport, a city where no one knows him and no one cares and no one listens, and he still can’t say it.

“I know,” breathes Nate, and understands, and almost says, _I miss you too._

There’s silence until Nate says, “Do you have to go soon?”

For the first time in Brad’s life, his layover is a miracle. They have a full hour. Brad doesn’t care what Nate’s been doing at the office, or where he’s going for lunch or how he visited his parents—all he cares is that this is Nate, this is Nate’s voice, and they’re so close—

“Brad…” Nate’s voice goes soft, poignant.

Brad knows exactly what’s coming next, and takes a breath. “Do you want to tell the truth now?” he asks.

He hears Nate make a sound. He can imagine him opening his mouth and closing it. Brad knew it would stop him. Nate is smart and doesn’t answer the question.

“I don’t know if I told you, but there’s a girl—”

Brad doesn’t hear the rest. He knows what Nate is doing.

“—and I think I might—”

Brad fakes some boarding announcement, presses the red button a little too hard, sags a little in the seat. Suddenly he feels so tired, so jetlagged, it’s too early—it’s two in the afternoon—fuck, what the hell is he doing? Fucking torturing himself over something that happened fucking years ago, that he’s still dragging out—and after that, Brad really does stop. Nate calls, and calls, and then he doesn’t call anymore. The last thing Brad gets is an email.

_I don’t know what I did. I miss you._

He can almost hear the pause of Nate’s typing after the third “I.” It doesn’t work like it used to.

: : :

It’s three am again. Brad almost wishes he wanted to get drunk. He calls Nate.

“Hello?” answers a sleepy voice.

“I’m sorry,” says Brad, and after a few seconds of silence, he hangs up. He doesn’t know what he’s sorry for, but he is. Nate doesn’t call him back. Brad almost manages to stop thinking about him. Almost.

: : :

Sometimes things don’t end the way you want them to, and that’s okay. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon. Brad wakes up. Civilian comforts like being able to fall asleep on the couch make him lazy. He looks at the empty white of the walls in his bungalow. The window is open, and the wind before the storm they’ve been talking about on the news is coming in. Distantly, and then very sharply, Brad thinks of his routine. The one he lives, the one he lived with Nate. He suddenly has the urge to tear things off of the wall. There’s no need, of course—all of the photos of the two of them are already gone. There’s nothing in his life that reminds him of Nate. There never really had been—he was always careful—except for some points where everything had reminded of Nate. He had woken up with Nate, and went to sleep with Nate, and sometimes he did both and had Nate with him.

He still can’t stand the sight of anything in his house. It’s not Nate that’s bothering him. It’s the lack of any emptiness. There are still things hanging on. He doesn’t know why it makes him so angry.

He tells himself he’s over it now. He feels like telling someone to make it real. He kept telling himself that he and Nate were real. That might’ve ruined it, that constant checking up with himself that he did. It doesn’t matter, but he thinks about calling Ray. The sad part, the really sad part, Brad thinks, is that even Ray’s sort of fallen by the wayside. "Well, no shit," he says aloud. Everything sort of fell by the wayside. Things do that when you don’t care about them—or care more for one thing than for the rest of them.

: : :

In 2004, Nate leaves the Marines. The same year, Brad goes on to serve an additional tour in Iraq.

Three years after that, Nate Fick gets married. Brad is back from another deployment. He isn’t invited to the wedding; he doesn’t even know if it’s the same girl. It’s fine. He’s not insulted either way. He gets it. He’s not alone, he’s not lonely, he’s fine. He surfs, and rides his bike, and goes on with his life.

He does, however, print out that last email and forgets about it for a long time, until one night he finds it, crumpled up in the very back of the drawer in his bedside table. For the next week Brad keeps it in his pocket, and at night he takes it out and reads the two sentences, over and over and over until his eyes hurt and the letters look strange and foreign and go in and out of focus on the page. He pictures Nate sitting at his computer, tries to imagine Nate’s lips forming the words, replays it in his head enough to slow it down until he gets one perfect image of Nate, until he can imagine him sitting at his computer and working—until Brad forgets that Nate is writing the email, until Nate is just frowning, teeth worrying his lip, his pale eyebrows furrowed. Brad remembers that look, remembers Nate this way, pushes it away without malice.

It’s weird. The whole thing—the stray memory, that little leftover scene from a life together. Brad plays it over in his head enough until it becomes just Nate, no computer, no worry, no unhappiness, no doubt. Just Nate. And when Brad gets himself to imagine Nate smiling, he finally knows when it’s time to let go.


End file.
